Millard Fillmore 13th President of the USA Date of Birth: 07.01.1800 Country: USA

Biography of Millard Fillmore

Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States. He received only a basic education and at the age of twenty, he moved to Buffalo with the aim of studying law. Admitted to the bar in 1823, he practiced law in East Aurora, New York, and soon caught the attention of influential New York politicians.

In 1828, Fillmore met Thurlow Weed, who convinced him to join the Anti-Masonic Movement. After being elected to the state legislature of New York the following year, he followed Weed into the Anti-Jacksonian movement and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1832. He remained a member of the House, with a two-year hiatus, until 1842 and became a leader of the Whig faction headed by Henry Clay.

After the election of William Henry Harrison as President of the United States in 1840, Fillmore headed the budget committee that developed the protective tariff law of 1842. He suffered a defeat in his attempt to become a candidate for vice president but was nominated for governor of New York in 1844 with the support of the Clay faction. After losing in the fall elections, Fillmore returned to his law practice.

However, four years later, largely to appease the Clay faction, which opposed the nomination of Zachary Taylor for president, Fillmore was nominated as the vice-presidential candidate by the Whig Party. After winning the election, he presided over the heated debates in the Senate on slavery and the fate of the territories acquired during the Mexican War.

Fillmore held moderate anti-slavery views but believed that the issue should be resolved through compromise rather than force. When he became President on July 9, 1850, following Taylor's death, he formed a new cabinet and in August 1850, he sent his first message to Congress, supporting the main provisions of Clay's plan to achieve a compromise on the issue of slavery. This position put him at odds with President Taylor, who, despite being a slaveholder from Louisiana, opposed any concessions to the system of slavery. Taylor's death and Fillmore's ascension were thus among the main causes of the adoption of the five specific measures that became part of the Compromise of 1850. Fillmore signed all five and made a sincere effort to implement them.

His firm position, particularly on the issue of the Fugitive Slave Act, was met with opposition from abolitionists and cost him the support of a significant portion of the northern wing of the Whig Party. When Clay died in 1852, Fillmore lost support within the party and was defeated by General Winfield Scott in the race for the presidential nomination. In addition, many of the Whig Party delegates at the convention sought to repeal the Compromise of 1850. The final version of the party's political platform contained only conditional approval of this document.

In the original draft of his farewell address to Congress, Fillmore proposed resolving the issue of slavery by "sending black people back to Africa." He left the presidency still believing in this solution, although at the urging of his cabinet, the proposal was excluded from the presidential message. Fillmore, who explained his defeat in the 1844 gubernatorial election by claiming that voters born outside the United States had voted against him, became a member of the American Party (the "Know-Nothing" party) after the split in the Whig Party. He was nominated by this political group for President in 1856 but finished third in the election, behind James Buchanan and John C. Frémont.

In the subsequent years, Fillmore did not belong to any party but consistently supported the idea of negotiation and compromise on the issue of slavery, which ultimately led him to support the Democratic candidate General George B. McClellan against Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Fillmore died in Buffalo on March 8, 1874.